My Husband and My Pelvis

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My Hus­band and My Pelvis — you are not a role, a rela­tion­ship, or a thought. You are the total­i­ty of you — and espe­cial­ly what you experience

Back in the days of my web­site, I had a long sec­tion on Body­work. As Body­work was a big part of the work I did with clients, I want­ed to pro­vide infor­ma­tion for home study. Any­way, I’m going to do a series of arti­cles about Bodywork. 

And you can learn more here:

It’s a dif­fi­cult thing — learn­ing to observe your­self as you play games. And one of the hard­est games to catch, until you notice, is the myth of objectification.

Today’s title comes from a friend. 

The short ver­sion is that I’ve known her for decades. She attend­ed our Work­shops, did a lit­tle ther­a­py, and a lot of Bodywork. 

Like many West­ern­ers, she lives in her head, and holds a lot of sto­ries / judge­ments to be “true.” She’s into rules and roles, and self-pro­tec­tion. The lat­ter led to not a few low­er back issues.

One friend described her as “brittle.”

She moves like some­one walk­ing on thin ice, and I guess that’s what her life appears to be like. One wrong step and “pow” — out goes her back.

The quote happened some years ago, at a time when she was seeing me plus two other body workers.

We’d just fin­ished a Body­work ses­sion, and I made a pelvic ref­er­ence, which was sort of a schema: “Your pelvis is tight, which has led to back issues, which are now spread­ing up your spine. But the root cause is a tight pelvis.”

So, from a Bodywork perspective, here’s the pelvic stuff. 

A tight pelvis is a blocked pelvis. To do the block­ing, you have to “freeze” the pelvis (keep it from mov­ing) — and you do that by tight­en­ing the mus­cles above the pelvis (at the mid back,) the stom­ach mus­cles and the leg muscles.

I had long ago decided that she as out of touch with her passion, and that she was fixated on “doing her life right.” As in, being a “good” daughter, “good” wife, “good” friend, etc.

Her instinct is to be her­self, and “her­self” (like all of us) is messy, bois­ter­ous, pas­sion­ate. But… her par­ents espe­cial­ly want­ed her to con­trol her­self. To behave (in ways that would ben­e­fit them.)

Typ­i­cal­ly, when our body (which wants to move freely) and our minds con­flict, the mind wins. It does so at the sub­con­scious lev­el. The un-dealt-with con­flict becomes rigid­i­fied in the body. The mind brings the body under con­trol by lock­ing down. Suppressing. 

Except it does­n’t work. Tight­ness leads to increased tight­ness, all the time. And that leads to more guard­ed­ness. All of this hap­pens so the mind does­n’t have to “step up” and deal with the con­flict between who we are ad who oth­ers demand that we be.

In talk ther­a­py, I’d make the point that our sto­ries are just that, and that they mean noth­ing. Humans are process­es, not fixed enti­ties. We are who we are, moment by moment, We are not labels.

With my friend, I’d sug­gest that she stop try­ing to please oth­ers (specif­i­cal­ly, stop try­ing to “be good”) and to spend more time work­ing on her­self by find­ing and feel­ing her passion.

Which is a pelvic / lower back thing.

The back pelvis is the home to pas­sion for life — it’s ener­get­i­cal­ly where we feel our sense of pur­pose. The front pelvis is all about “pas­sion for pas­sion’s sake.” It’s about sen­su­al­i­ty, sex­u­al­i­ty and excitement.

Which is why dra­mat­ic pelvic motion catch­es our eye. Hulas, Latin danc­ing, pelvis rock­ing — all are relat­ed to “being turned on.” And for many peo­ple, such pub­lic dis­plays are frowned upon.

In Breath­work, once you get the rhythm going we add in a pelvic tilt. We do so to free the ener­gy trapped in the region, so that you can actu­al­ly feel it. My friend has done some Breath­work in our Work­shops, and I made a men­tal note to add it to her next Body­work session.

Here (finally!) comes the quote!

So, we were talk­ing, and I said the above stuff about her pelvis, and she sighs and says, 

“All three of you (her trio of body work­ers) say the same thing — I need to work on my pelvis.”

Me: “Great minds…”

She: “Of course, the three of you don’t think of my pelvis the way my hus­band does.”

I was speech­less. No clue what to do with that. Oth­er than to iden­ti­fy it as a world-class diversion.

For starters,

1. she has no idea how I view her pelvis. Nor does she have a clue about the oth­er 2 body workers.
2. “my hus­band” is a role, not a person.
3. and I think this is the impor­tant one, I was talk­ing about how she relates to her pelvis! Sud­den­ly, we’re talk­ing about 3 body work­ers and her husband!

Given the state of her pelvis, her husband was irrelevant

The issue for her is address­ing her pas­sion and sex­u­al­i­ty and free­dom and ener­gy with­out ref­er­ence to some­one or some­thing else. And she need­ed to address how her desire to be “good” gained her noth­ing but rigid­i­ty, stiff­ness and injuries.

Inter­est­ing­ly, she then said, “I need to do this more.” She put one hand on the small of her back and her oth­er hand on her low­er bel­ly, and rocked her pelvis. Just like the pelvis rock in Breathwork.

OK, so here’s the upshot.

A cou­ple of weeks lat­er, we were doing anoth­er Body­work ses­sion. I set her up for Breath­work, and asked her to her to breathe, then add in the pelvic tilt. 

Soon, her body start­ed to vibrate a bit. She stayed with it for 10 min­utes or so. After­word, she said, “My whole body is tingling.”

I sug­gest­ed that she keep doing Breath­work at home, and see what happens.

The tingle lasted for 3 days.

This is the move­ment of ener­gy (Chi, Qi, Prana) in the body, and it hap­pens by get­ting out of your head and out of your own way. It’s life ener­gy, and it’s there all the time. That we don’t notice it — that it “goes back­ground,” does­n’t mean it’s not there.

At the end of the day, the issue is NOT how we under­stand stuff. Under­stand­ing is OK as a par­lor trick, but shift­ing away from rigid def­i­n­i­tions (and rigid bod­ies) means the free­dom to experience.

My friend is a clas­sic case of try­ing to under­stand, as opposed to let­ting her­self live - feel, process, expe­ri­ence. This moment-by-moment alter­na­tive is not a replace­ment for think­ing. It’s an alter­na­tive to “ONLY think­ing.”

You might want to con­sid­er giv­ing your mind a lit­tle pat on the head, and decide to breathe into your body. See if you can feel your pas­sion, locate your dri­ve, or sim­ply enjoy the charge of being alive.

Stop trying to figure yourself out

Let go of think­ing, for a bit, by let­ting your thoughts flow. Let go of defin­ing, blam­ing, get­ting caught in your head. Be appre­cia­tive ofr your thought process­es, and rec­og­nize you have thoughts — you are not your thoughts.

Let your­self flow, let your­self be free, and drop the labels. No one’s son / daugh­ter. No one’s hus­band / wife. Just play with being.

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Series Nav­i­ga­tion

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